Sunday, March 26, 2006

Update: Peru's next president won't shoot gays (but his mom might)

Ah! What a difference a month makes! The last time I wrote about the upcoming Peruvian elections, Ollanta Humala, a left-wing indigenous candidate, was being questioned about potential human rights violations during his military career and uncertain comments about his proposed fiscal policies (he was also being called a hypochrite for claiming he would accept a gay cabinet member but refusing to say whether he'd support legislation to protect gays and lesbians from being persecuted). Humala was running second in polls to Lourdes Flores Nano, a conservative former congresswoman, and political analysts were saying that his campaign was floundering and might not find footing before the elections.

Today, it is Ms. Flores Nano's campaign that is in free-fall (she is now third in the polls), Humala is on top and former president Alan Garcia is second. Not that Humala's victory is secured in next month's primary elections set for April 9th. He would have to get more than 50% to avoid a run-off and he currently stands at 26%. Nevertheless in this morning's syndicated United States political gab-fest, The McLaughlin Group, isolationist United States right-wing pundit Patrick Buchanan predicted that "extremist" Humala would be the new Peruvian president.

The gay rights issue, which might have been a blip in the radar during the campaign, also has taken a life of its own and strengthened the perception that if Humala has a weakness, it's his own family, members of whom have either challenged him politically by running for office in opposition parties (one of his brothers is also a presidential candidate) or spouted incendiary comments to the press.

Humala has been trying to distance himself from comments made by his mother to the newsdaily "Expreso" on March 21st regarding moral values. According to this site, when asked about those who would rape a minor, Mrs. Tasso (pictured above) said: "I bet you that if you execute two rapists by shooting, there won't be any additional rapes, and by shooting two homosexuals, there wouldn't be so much immorality in the streets."

Declarations made by the Humalas to the press in Lima, promoting hate and violence against gays and against me as an individual, sadden and worry me but do not surprise me because the Ollanta newspaper, which has circulated throughout Peru in the last few years under the name of presdiential candidate Ollanta Humala - which I have read with feelings of revulsion and fear - is filled with homophobic venom and highlights and glorifies violence against gays (and violence in general)...

[There's] abundant testimony and not only in the pages of Ollanta, in which people jump over each other with abundant praise for the killing of gays by Iranian clerics, they site supposed biblical passages that justify this homicidial violence and propagate the idea that the Incan Empire was grandiose and admirable for, amomg other things, lynching any man suspected of having sex with another man...

Ollanta Humala says that he doesn't share his parents' ideas (if we can call ideas those barbaric calls to tribal violence against those who are different to the majority or those who are uncomfotable with their authoritarian ideals). How can we believe him, if he allowed his uncommon name to be also the name of the Ollanta newspaper, spreading such sinister ideas throughout Peru... inviting [readers] to lynch, in the name of their racist revolution not only homosexuals but Chilean inversionists, bank owners, Jews, the Minister of Economy and even President Toledo?...

In the name of decency and purity, how ironic!, the Humalas accuse me of "sowing immorality everywhere [a los cuatro vientos]" and of "causing damage to youth" because I say that I am bisexual. They are wrong, these pintoresque guardians of morality. I defend tolerance and respect towards sexual minorities, as do civilized societies, which protect minorities and allow them to organize and express themselves. The Humala clan is sowing hate and violence against gays, and that certainly is a shameful morality...

If Humala wants to demonstrate that he is not a homophobe, he could make the tolerant gesture of appearing in my [television] show, agree to be interviewed and apologize for the threats made by his parents and his brother Amauro, who is now supporting his candidacy from jail... How does he differenciate himself from his parents and his brother if he is incapable of sitting down to talk with me because it repulses him that I'm not a copper-toned macho man who hates Chileans and gays?

It must be said that to make his argument, Mr. Bayly, who has written a few rose-tinted novels about gay life among the high class in Peru, unfortunately exposes a bias towards indigenous culture by alluding to rhetoric that links Incan culture to anti-semitic, xenophobic and homophobic ideals, which further muddles the issue.

Bayly also is playing to recent reports that Humala had despectively called Chile an "all-knowing nation" which Humala tried to put to rest today.

For his part, Humala was seen visiting his parents and having a heated conversation with them after their comments were printed in "Expreso." In a press conference that followed, his parents announced that they would contemplate "silence" for the rest of the presidential elections as not to damage their son's potential to become the next Peruvian president.

For the latest news on the Peruvian election you might as well go to this blog ran through the University of British Columbia in Canada.

the most serious of Peru's lgbt websites, to keep abreast about what our community is saying about Humala.

What gets to me, is that in the foreign media Humala is portrayed as a 'leftist'. Well the truth is that there is nothing 'leftist' about Humala--he is simply another in a long line of military men who have established autocratic and dictatorial regimes in Peru.

Sadly, the dispossession of millions of Peruvians means that gullibility is rife in the country, and many of those who vote for Humala are voting, as we say, con el higado and not with la cabeza.

Thank you for discussing this very important elections. Peruvians will have a clear choice, to continue along the economic path, that while imperfect, has modernized the country after years of stagnation, or to step back into the annals of Peruvian history and create a new system modeled upon two other military leaders who have claimed power in neighboring countries (need I say more?)

One of the commentators refers to "two military leaders who have claimed power in neighboring countries," and about the "modernization" experienced by peru. I will start with this commentary. I am a peruvian who is currently living in the U.S. and I have myself been witness to the sad perceptions that are part of what might call traditional societies. I first saw this with the reservations that my parents showed my sister when she dater an African American, when I learned of one of friends hardships in coming out to his devoutly catholic ecudorian parents about his sexual preferences. However on the other hand as a person who visits peru quite frequently and more so than not a small quechua village the department of Huancavelica, I have also witnessed the racism that still exist in Peru. The fact some children from those small towns refuse to proudly speak their mother tongues when they arrive in Lima and that a young man I knew only visited his natal village for the first time after his mother died b/c his friends on the coast would often debase him b/c of his heritage. My current girlfriend has told me horror stories of how "criollo" peruvians would treat her an her family who had relocted to the capital. How her quechua surname was the object of ridicule and shame. The sad thing about hate from all sides is that it impedes what may be the best possible aspects of modernity and globilization which is the fact that this world for the most part is composed of outsiders-- to one another from each other. The ideal should be that marginalized people whether quechua, aymara, ashininka, gay, lesbian or transgender black, and even poor whites should find a common thread in their exclusion to at least arrive at mutual tolerance and perhaps establish a floor where all these repressed or marginalized sectors can put forth elements of a common agenda.

My second comment is go to Huanca Huanca, Aguas Calientes i.e., "peru profundo" the parts of our nation tourist revere and tell me if madernity has shown its light on those people who have to boil water to avoid cholera, or lack light, medical care, or infrustructure to be parts of society on terms that are equitable and might go a long way to dissipate the sad state of polirization in the americas below the border.